Sharp develops Blu-ray recorder with terabyte hard drive

Mark Raby, 26th September 2007

Osaka (Japan) - Sharp plans to launch a Blu-ray Disc recorder with one terabyte of storage space, enough for over 125 hours of high definition video.

The device is set to launch in Japan on December 1. At 300,000 yen ($2,600) it will be the highest-capacity recorder of its kind in the world. By comparison the Tivo Series 3, the top-selling standalone HD DVR in North America, only stores around 32 hours of HD content.

In Japan, Sharp also has plans to put out eight new Blu-ray players by the end of the year. In the US, several new high definition disc players are slated for the holiday season, but the domestic market has seen virtually no standalone recorder devices for either HD DVD or Blu-ray.

Blu-ray backer and co-creator Sony announced earlier this month it is going to stop production of all DVD-based digital video recorders in Japan and focus exclusively on Blu-ray.